OVER 200 YEARS OF NATIVE AMERICAN ART AND …€¦ · CULTURE AT THE PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM, SALEM,...
Transcript of OVER 200 YEARS OF NATIVE AMERICAN ART AND …€¦ · CULTURE AT THE PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM, SALEM,...
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OVER 200 YEARS OF NATIVE AMERICAN ART AND
CULTURE AT THE PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM,
SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS
Karen Kramer Russell*
Founded in 1799, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) is one of America’s oldest
museums. Since its inception, PEM has collected, displayed, and interpreted Native
American art and cultural objects in a variety of ways, each rooted in the conscious and
unconscious attitudes of their time. This paper aims to provide a brief history of PEM’s
collecting, exhibition, and interpretation of Native American art and culture, which spans
210 years, and also to use PEM’s collection as a case-study to explore how it correlates
to larger national movements of museology and, at times, federal policy.
PEM’s Native American collection numbers about 20,000 works, the majority of
which are from the early nineteenth-century to the present from North America, and
encompasses over 10,000 years of human creativity in the Americas. The superior
quality of individual works, its breadth, sheer size, and provenance ranks it among the
most important collections in the world and the oldest ongoing collection in the Western
hemisphere. It is from this unique perspective that affords PEM the position of reflecting
on past and current approaches to displaying, interpreting, and collecting Native
American art objects.
Members of the East India Marine Society (EIMS), PEM’s founding institution,
collected most of the museum’s earliest Native American acquisitions. Established as an
elite social and business organization as Salem rose in importance as a center for
maritime trade, society members were global entrepreneurs–sea captains and traders–
who traveled the world in search of commerce. The society’s charter included a
provision for the establishment of a ―cabinet of natural and artificial curiosities‖1 which
these sea captains and supercargoes collected from beyond the Cape of Good Hope,
South Africa or Cape Horn, South America for the enrichment and delight of family and
friends in Salem.2
* Sincere thanks to the University of Tulsa College of Law, Professor Judith Royster, and Dean Levit for including my presentation in the Exhibiting Culture: Museums and Indians Symposium. It was an honor to participate with such esteemed speakers. All photographs are © 2010 Peabody Essex Museum, and published courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.
1. Ernest Stanley Dodge & Charles H. P. Copeland, Handbook to the Collections of the Peabody Museum of Salem (Peabody Museum 1949).
2. By-Laws and Regulations of the Salem East-India Marine Society 3 (Pool & Palfray 1808).
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Each member of the EIMS recorded daily navigational observations, nautical
information, and ―whatever is singular in the manners, customs, dress, ornaments, &c. of
any people‖ in a journal during voyages and turned over their completed journal to the
society upon return.3 Made available for other members, and likely modeled after the
Royal Society’s instructions to Captain James Cook for his first voyage, EIMS journals
were not only invaluable resources to those setting sail without the benefit of
lighthouses, buoys, and charts, but also, they ―were, in effect, the key to empire, the way
to wealth.‖4
Fig. 1: East India Marine Hall, 1825-1867.
Fig. 2: East India Marine Hall, c. 2003.
3. Id.
4. Lloyd Brown, The Story of Maps 121 (Dover 1980). More than 100 journals, now in PEM’s Phillips Library collection, were accumulated by the EIMS.
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Society members brought to Salem a diverse collection of objects from the
Northwest coast of North America, Asia, Africa, Oceania, India, and elsewhere. By the
1820s, the Society’s collection had outgrown its display capacity in a rented hall, and in
1825, the Society moved into its own building called the East India Marine Hall,
constructed for the rare and valuable collection and also for Society gatherings. This
space, which today contains the original display cases and some of the very first objects
collected, is a cornerstone of the museum campus.5
―In the [museum’s] earliest years, through the 1830s, Native American [art]
objects were shown as part of an eclectic [and literal] cabinet of curiosities reflecting
enlightenment sensibilities‖ that had been at play in Europe for decades by this point,
―emerging American nationalism, and related [perceptions and] attitudes toward the
exoticness of [―others‖] represented in the society’s diverse collections.‖6
Fig. 3: East India Marine Hall, 1824-1867. Cabinets of curiosities lined the center and
both sides of the room. An early 19th century Greenland kayak and the oldest known extant
full-size birch bark Passamaquoddy canoe are presented by the windows.
Travel to the Pacific Northwest coast, a mere sixteen years after the establishment
of the United States, was frequent due to the burgeoning sea otter fur trade. These
especially soft and lustrous furs proved remarkably profitable cargo for Salem ships in
China trade. Collected in sometimes two to three year periods at a time, and then traded
in Canton, China for tea, silk, and porcelain, many handsome donations to the collection
were made through the first half of the nineteenth-century. Through social contact and
business relationships with local officials, Society members were collecting ―curiosities‖
–however, the singular nature and superior quality of many of the individual works they
collected suggest that these pieces were likely gifted, and possibly received, as objects of
diplomacy–not just mere objects of curiosity.7
5. See Figs. 1 & 2.
6. John R. Grimes, Thomas Haukaas, Mary Lou Curran & Karen Kramer, Power and Beauty: A New
Native American Art Gallery at the Peabody Essex Museum, 29 Am. Indian Art 48, 48 (2003). See Fig. 3.
7. In Castle McLaughlin’s 2003 publication, Arts of Diplomacy: Lewis & Clark’s Indian Collection (U.
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Salem trade in South America was
also extensive in the nineteenth-century;
rubber brought Salem captains into
contact with indigenous people in the
Amazon River basin, and trade in guano
and silver brought them to Peru. Several
important pieces to the collection were
donated, including remarkable
featherwork collected in the Amazon
River Valley by Henry P. Upton and
M.W. Shepard between 1821 and 1853.8
Other Native American art made its
way into the collection in the nineteenth-
century by way of missionary and military
activity and through family connections.
Wash. Press 2003), the idea of gift exchanges as symbolic diplomatic gestures is explored in depth. See Figs. 4 & 5.
8. See Figs. 6 & 7.
Fig. 4: Earliest known Chilkat
blanket, c. 1832, Tlingit artist. Mountain
goat wool, cedar bark. PEM Cat. No.
E3648. Gift of Captain Robert Bennett
Forbes. Photograph by Mark Sexton and
Jeffrey Dykes.
Fig. 5: 1 of 14 known Djilakons
masks from this early period, donated
by Captain Daniel Cross, 1827. PEM
Cat. No. E3483. Kaigani Haida artist,
Village of Kasaan, Southeastern
Alaska, circa 1820. Wood, paint.
Photograph by Mark Sexton and Jeffrey
Dykes.
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Fig. 8: Choctaw sash.
PEM Cat. no. E25410.
Photograph by Mark
Sexton and Jeffrey Dykes.
Fig. 9: Southeastern sash,
possibly Choctaw, mid-19th century.
Wool, silk, and glass beads. Gift of
Charles Heald, 1955. PEM cat. no.
E25963. Photograph by Mark Sexton
and Jeffrey Dykes.
Fig. 6: South American feather
headdress. PEM Cat. no. E6987.
Photograph by Mark Sexton and Jeffrey
Dykes.
Fig. 7: South American feather
headdress. PEM Cat. no. E6988.
Photograph by Mark Sexton and
Jeffrey Dykes.
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Salem, Massachusetts was a hub for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions (ABCFM) in the nineteenth-century. From 1817–1883, missions were
conducted among Native American communities, especially the Cherokees, Chickasaws,
Choctaws, and the Dakotas. PEM houses some very early and rare Southeastern material
collected by these ABCFM Missionaries.9
In the 1860s, as Salem declined as a seaport and center of trade, the East India
Marine Society experienced waning membership and financial troubles. In 1867, the
great benefactor George Peabody created the Peabody Academy of Science, which
subsumed EIMS museum holdings, as well as natural history collections from Salem’s
Essex Institute.10
With the museum’s transformation came the optimism of modernity.
Extensive renovations to the museum’s galleries produced new, systematic exhibitions
that followed the latest classifications of biology, geology, and ethnology, as illustrated
in the 1860s display of ―specimen types‖ in East Hall, a gallery adjacent to East India
Marine Hall.11
Fig. 10: East Hall gallery, 1860s (adjacent to EIMH) with specimen boats in center.
By the last part of the nineteenth-century, as Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
was coming to light, Native Americans were being documented tirelessly, incorrectly
9. Figs. 8 & 9. See John R. Grimes, New England Missionaries and American Indian Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, Mag. Antiques 302, 309 (Sept. 1999).
10. See generally Peabody Essex Museum, Mission, Museum History, http://www.pem.org/mission/ museum_history (last accessed Sept. 29, 2009).
11. Figs. 10 & 11.
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thought of as a dying, vanishing race. At this time, the museum continued to focus on
developing science-based, systematic collections and exhibitions. Figure 11 illustrates an
1892 display case of primarily South American ceramics and featherwork. Here the
museum took a natural history display approach, presenting like objects as non-
functioning specimens, certainly not as artistic creations. As in the East India Marine
Hall and East Hall displays, no general information or individual artifact labels were
offered. At the time, these pieces were not seen as part of a continuum of any modern
world and, therefore, really did not need any explanation.12
Fig. 11: East Hall gallery display, 1892.
By the beginning of the twentieth-century, the Peabody Academy of Science
became the Peabody Museum of Salem and the museum focused more on local history.13
Native American objects displayed in East Hall remained relatively untouched
throughout much of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, acquisitions continued slowly
but steadily.14
During the 1970s and 1980s, ―there were increasing efforts to include
cultural context and aesthetic considerations in exhibitions. However, the overwhelming
thrust of the institution, and its public perception, was as an institution by and about
Salem sea captains.‖15
It was not until the 1990s that the museum broke free from prior historical
orientation. Under the leadership of Executive Director and CEO Dan L. Monroe, the
12. See generally Gifts of the Spirit: Works by Nineteenth-Century & Contemporary Native American Artists 6, 11–13(Peabody Essex Museum Collection vol. 132, 1996).
13. Grimes et al., supra n. 6, at 50.
14. Id. at 50 n. 3.
15. Id.
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Peabody Museum of Salem merged with the Essex Institute in 1992 to become the
Peabody Essex Museum and began to concentrate more on art and culture, celebrating
form, design, cultural context, and continuities of artistic and cultural creativity.16
At this
time, PEM embarked on a multiyear, multimillion-dollar expansion and renovation
project. The 1990 federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
(NAGPRA) was still fairly new, and PEM carried NAGPRA’s spirit of collaboration into
its curatorial program by proactively committing itself to working collaboratively with
contemporary Native American artists and scholars and to collecting contemporary
Native American art.17
Between 1996 and 1997, PEM mounted a special traveling exhibition and
companion catalogue that underscored these programmatic changes. Five people curated
Gifts of the Spirit: Works by Nineteenth-Century & Contemporary Native American
Artists, including two Native American guest curators, Suzan Shown Harjo and Richard
W. Hill, Sr., and brought together nineteenth-century works from PEM’s collection that
were shown alongside contemporary works borrowed from artists and public and private
collections across the country.18
Gifts of the Spirit was PEM’s first endeavor to display Native American objects as
art.19
Rather than grouping the objects chronologically or geographically, the curators
took a thematic approach. Within each theme, artworks were displayed in individual
vitrines rather than grouped into cases or on the walls en masse as in former ethnology
displays.20
The exhibition strategy juxtaposed nineteenth-century works with
contemporary art, emphasizing cultural and artistic connections and continuities between
past and present.21
In addition, first-person quotes and footage of contemporary artists
were incorporated into labels and computer kiosks. In the case of the nineteenth-century
artwork where the maker’s identity was unknown, labels described the maker as
―Anonymous Artist,‖ signaling to visitors that a specific person created the works rather
than an entire tribe.22
Building on the success of Gifts of the Spirit, PEM mounted subsequent special
exhibitions with a focus on art and culture based on the museum’s holdings. Indian
Market: New Directions in Southwestern Native American Pottery (2001) and
Uncommon Legacies: Native American Art from the Peabody Essex Museum (2001),
represented further attempts at layering interpretation, themes and timeframes, as well as
working with Native consultants.23
16. Id. at 50.
17. Id. at 50–54. Since the 1990s, PEM has added more than 250 works of contemporary Native American art to the collection, including paintings, works on paper, ceramics, jewelry, sculpture, and textiles.
18. Gifts of the Spirit, supra n. 12, at 6–7.
19. Displaying Native American objects as art was not an entirely innovative approach in museums. One of the most celebrated and earliest examples is the Museum of Modern Art’s 1941 seminal exhibition, Indian Art of the United States that emphasized art and aesthetics.
20. Fig. 12.
21. See generally Gifts of the Spirit, supra n. 12, at 10–18.
22. See generally id. at 6–7.
23. Uncommon Legacies: Native American Art from the Peabody Essex Museum was a traveling exhibition co-organized by PEM and the American Federation of Arts, New York.
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Fig. 12: Gifts of the Spirit exhibition, view of installation. Photograph by Mark Sexton
and Jeffrey Dykes.
In June 2003, PEM underwent a dramatic transformation expressed both
physically—through 250,000 square-feet of new and renovated facilities—and
intellectually—through a complete reformulation of the museum’s mission and
interpretive philosophy. This recent initiative expanded, reconfigured, and transformed
the 210-year-old institution, enabling PEM to showcase its outstanding collection of
contemporary and historic art and culture from around the world. The new museum
fulfills our deepened commitment to exhibitions and interpretation, scholarship,
programs, and acquisitions, which have
increasingly focused on creativity, cultural
context, and the complex relationships that
connect art to the world in which it is made.24
24. Fig. 13.
Fig. 13: Dancers from the Alaska
Native Heritage Center perform in the
museum’s new atrium. Led by Steve
Blanchett and Ossie Kairaiuak, dancers and
singers in the group include Jennifer Ann
Bacon, Debra Dommeck, Treena C.
McCormick, Emery Omiak, Samuel James
Roberson, Carl D. Topkok, and Stephanie
M. Wassilie. Photograph by Peabody Essex
Museum Staff.
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Included in the new museum campus are changing exhibition galleries. One of the
first exhibitions the Native American Art and Culture department unveiled within the
new museum paradigm in these changing galleries was Our Land: Contemporary Art
from the Arctic, a collaborative traveling exhibition project between PEM and the
governments of Canada and Nunavut during 2004 and 2005. Our Land celebrated the
growth of Inuit creative expression over the past five decades. Interpretive labels and text
panels, emphasizing the perspective of Inuit elders, artists, writers, and other community
members, were provided in both English and Inuktitut, the Inuit language that is
strikingly graphic in its design and composition. A likeness of the Northern Lights
appeared on the vaulted ceilings of our house galleries, giving the galleries a very subtle
ambience. Additionally, another deliberate ―design as interpretation‖ decision was made
to display as many objects as possible without plexiglass bonnets, rendering visitors with
a perceived increased accessibility to the material. The show had several new media
components including a three-dimensional flyover map that showed the United States in
relation to the northern-most points in Nunavut, and four flat-screens showing filmwork
by Zacharias Kunuk, award-winning Inuit filmmaker, director, and producer. In addition,
there was a touch-screen sound-station featuring selections of Inuit throat-singing and
contemporary music.25
Fig. 14: View of Our Land exhibition at PEM, 2005. Most of the sculptures were in
individual cases, while several larger works were on pedestals without plexiglass bonnets.
The exhibit’s lighting design also made use of the museum’s lofty new gallery spaces,
suggesting the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights. Photograph by Jeffrey Dykes.
25. Figs. 14 & 15.
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Fig. 15: Label in Our Land exhibition at Peabody Essex Museum, 2005. Information
was presented in English and Inuktitut, a written form of the Inuit language that employs
syllabics. Photograph by Jeffrey Dykes.
Also included in the new museum is a 3,700 square foot gallery dedicated to
showcasing the unique richness and range of the Native American art collection,
emphasizing aesthetic strengths of and cross-cultural connections between individual
objects. Intersections: Native American Art in a New Light opened in June 2006, as an
exhibition that transcends the boundaries of time and geography, and materials and
techniques, to explore identity, politics, and cultural exchange in Native American art.26
Intersections has 75 artworks and is divided into three sections that offer
perspectives on Native American art. Metaphor and Identity explores personal and
cultural identities and how these are expressed visually; Continuity and Innovation
examines intercultural influences in Native American art and illuminates the dialogue
between tradition and innovation; and Icons and Politics addresses the question of what
it means to be Native American in a changing world. Through the interplay of historic
objects and contemporary works, this section inverts popular stereotypes. The three
thematic sections are interconnected, and the exhibition design reflects this through
sculptural backdrops that also serve as wall dividers. The open floor plan encourages
visitors to make visual connections within and between the divisions.27
Intersections reflects PEM’s core values, which drive the show’s criteria, choices,
and approaches. The exhibition takes a thematic approach and is not organized according
to chronology or geographic regions. Groupings of art objects encourage comparison and
contrast, and the artworks emphasize connections between and within thematic
categories. The full expression of the museum’s Native American curatorial program is
still being realized.
PEM seeks to foster a culture of respectful inquiry between Native American and
non-Native American artists, scholars, tradition bearers, and museum visitors. It is a
process that starts and continues in dialogue: in the development of exhibitions, staff
26. I co-curated Intersections: Native American Art in a New Light with guest curator Laurie Beth Kalb, which is the second exhibition in this gallery since PEM’s reopening in 2003. Intersections has object rotations and changes at least once a year.
27. Fig. 16.
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exchanges, internships, and collections sharing; through the implementation of
NAGPRA; and through the development and presentation of publications, lectures,
demonstrations, films, on-line resources, and other digital media. This initiative is
premised on the idea that our collection is a living network of artworks, their makers, and
their viewers, together with the ideas and attitudes that flow between them. No museum
is merely an assemblage of things, but a microcosm of human interaction, engagement,
and inquiry. Within a museum setting, we are seeking interpretive approaches that move
beyond the biased historical narratives of the past. What can art ―mean‖ to our museum
visitors, given the frequently vast differences in culture, language, and worldview
between artist and viewer? As a people-centered museum, our resources are dedicated to
providing compelling and meaningful experiences to diverse audiences and toward
multiple ways of developing and sharing perspectives on Native American art.28
Collecting goals, exhibition paradigms, and interpretive strategies have changed
over the past 210 years, but encouraging people to discover and explore the rich
interconnections among artistic and cultural expressions of the past and present remains
at PEM’s very core.
Fig. 16: In the Intersections: Native American Art in a New Light gallery, the
backdrops consist of scrims with enlarged digital images of works in the collection. They
are textural gestures and abstractions of designs, colors, and patterns, rather than literal
representations. Photograph by Barbara Kennedy.
28. Grimes et al., supra n. 6, at 57.